It's staggering how I could be 63 years old, have known or personally corresponded with many hundreds of Catholics, have read Himalayan stacks of Catholic books and periodicals, have visit Catholic websites, English and Spanish language, from far-right-to-far-left,the ones I consider doctrinally sound and even the ones I, personally, think are like Kellogg's, full of flakes and nuts --- and have never met one single, solitary Catholic who thought sex between a husband and wife is dirty and sinful.
Where do you hang out, what kind of selection-filter are you using, how separated are you from actual reality, how immersed are you in your own propaganda, that you find this even remotely credible?
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The Word, as has been explained too many times, clearly shows Joseph and Mary had other kids of their own. There are too many passages that show they did have children when read in context. And please....none of this the word brethren can mean cousin, other believers, when we read the passages indicating they had children.
That catholics continue to perpetuate this ever virgin myth of Mary is just totally contrary to the Word.
Roman catholics have built up Mary to something that is not recognizable when viewed through the lense of Scripture.
It's why Christians reject roman catholic tradition on this issue and a host of others.
Here, a couple of links with references to some of the ECF’s who espoused that view, found with a google search.
http://www.godrules.net/articles/earlychurch-on-sex.htm
http://whychurchfatherswerenegativeaboutsex.blogspot.com/
There are other indicators as well. For one thing, the way celibacy is held up as the ideal, especially for the priesthood.
Not to mention that married couples who give up sex have been lauded. There was at least one thread that I recall recently about a married couple who agreed to be celibate and it drew mixed reactions, but there were those who supported it.
And the reactions of Catholics when it’s even suggested that Mary had sex with Joseph. Catholics are just aghast at the thought.
I’ve heard people state that Mary couldn’t have had sex with Joseph because she was sinless, or rather that she couldn’t have been sinless if she had had sex with Joseph.
Perhaps not, but while modern RCs have become more enlightened on the subject, RCs often assert one must go to the "fathers," and there we see no less than Jerome, Augustine and Tertullian imputing uncleanness to marriage or its relations.
this too we must observe, at least if we would faithfully follow the Hebrew, that while Scripture on the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days relates that, having finished the works of each, God saw that it was good, on the second day it omitted this altogether, leaving us to understand that two is not a good number because it destroys unity, and prefigures the marriage compact. Hence it was that all the animals which Noah took into the ark by pairs were unclean. Odd numbers denote cleanness. St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus Book 1 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vi.vi.I.html
So much for 2 x 2 evangelism! And behold how the scholar resorts to this false dilemma, as on First Corinthians 7 he reasons:
It is good, he says, for a man not to touch a woman. If it is good not to touch a woman, it is bad to touch one: for there is no opposite to goodness but badness. But if it be bad and the evil is pardoned, the reason for the concession is to prevent worse evil. (Against Jovinianus (Book I, v. 7)
He furthermore stated,
It is not disparaging wedlock to prefer virginity. No one can make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil....Let them marry and be given in marriage who eat their bread in the sweat of their brow, whose land brings forth thorns and thistles, and whose crops are choked with brambles. My seed produces fruit a hundredfold.(''Letter'' 22; http://epistolae.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/letter/447.html).
In addition, Augustine held marital relations must involve sinful lust:
...the very embrace which is lawful and honourable cannot be effected without the ardour of lust, so as to be able to accomplish that which appertains to the use of reason and not of lust....This is the carnal concupiscence, which, while it is no longer accounted sin in the regenerate, yet in no case happens to nature except from sin. On Marriage and Concupiscence (Book I, cp. 27); http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15071.htm
Then we have Tertullian, who argued that second marriage, having been freed from the first by death, "will have to be termed no other than a species of fornication,'' partly based on the reasoning that such involves desiring to marry a women out of sexual ardor. ''An Exhortation to Chastity,'' Chapter IX.Second Marriage a Species of Adultery, Marriage Itself Impugned, as Akin to Adultery, ANF, v. 4, p. 84.]
But Mary never had sex with her husband Joseph... When priests were married they were not to have sex with their wived the day prior to saying mass ....and on this site I have read posters say that sex without the intent of getting pregnant (using birth control ) is "mutual masterbation"
Mary and Joseph must just be some weird anomaly.
The faithful knew, through the witness of Scripture and Tradition, that Jesus was Marys only child and that she remained a lifelong virgin.
http://www.catholic.com/tracts/mary-ever-virgin
You can run all you want, but you can’t hide. The truth is that your religion says that sex between a husband and wife (Joseph and Mary) is sin. Yet it also suggest to propagate and fill the earth as Scripture says. Oh until your latest pope and now its been changed to NOT to breed like rabbits. Still your religion wants you to have children, so it wants you to sin so you stay indebted to it for salvation. Just how evil can you get? Stay tuned Im sure it will get even more sinful. Oh wait news flash the pope’s science adviser worships gaia yep it just got worst!
“and have never met one single, solitary Catholic who thought sex between a husband and wife is dirty and sinful.”
Wow! Fantastic.
Finally a Catholic that understands that Mary and Joseph enjoyed the command to have sex as a married couple. That it wasn’t sinful or dirty, but beautiful and wholesome and commanded by God for every married couple. It is refreshing to find someone who isn’t bound by false dogma, at the expense of what God commanded.
Thank you for posting.